A longitudinal evaluation of government-sponsored job skills training and basic employment services among U.S. baby boomers with economic disadvantages

Job skills training is a cost-effective strategy for improving employment among individuals who have low income and employment barriers, but few U.S. government-sponsored employment program participants have received such training. To better understand long-term gains from job skills training, this study compared employment and earnings trajectories between program participants who received job skills training and those who received basic services only. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we estimated 33-year employment and earnings trajectories among U.S. baby-boomer cohorts while accounting for baseline group heterogeneity using inverse propensity score weighting. We found increases in employment rates over the life course, especially among Black women. Job skills training also increased earnings by up to 69.6 % compared to basic services only. Despite the long-term gains in employment and earnings, job skills training participation is not sufficient to address gender as well as racial and ethnic gaps in full-time employment. Findings reinforce the importance of incorporating job skills training as an essential service element of government-sponsored employment programs to improve long-term labor market outcomes among Americans with economic disadvantages.     

Reducing inequality summer by summer: Lessons from an evaluation of the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program

Many U.S. cities have implemented Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) with the hope of improving long-term behavioral, academic, and economic outcomes among program participants, particularly inner-city, low-income, and non-white youth. While recent empirical studies show positive impacts for some outcomes, little is known about program mechanisms and the potential to reduce inequality across groups. Using an embedded randomized control trial, this study evaluates improvements in short-term outcomes for the Boston SYEP based on survey data collected for both treatment and control groups during the summers of 2015, 2016, and 2017. Participants reported increases in community engagement and social skills, job readiness skills, and college aspirations that were significantly different from the control group. In most cases, the largest gains were observed for non-white youth suggesting that the program may have the capacity to reduce inequality across groups. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand how summer jobs programs work and for whom, and to use these findings to strengthen and target the SYEP intervention. We also provide practical lessons learned regarding the development and deployment of our survey instrument to both the treatment and control groups among the youth population.     

Intersectionality: Connecting experiences of gender with race at work

In recent years, research from various disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, economics, gender studies, and organizational behavior, has illuminated the importance of considering the various ways in which multiple social categories intersect to shape outcomes for women in the workplace. However, these findings are scattered across disciplines, making it difficult for organizational scholars to leverage this knowledge in the advancement of gender research. The purpose of this review is to assemble these findings to capture how gender and race, when considered in tandem, can generate new understandings about women of different racial groups and their experiences in the workplace. We first provide a review of both historic and contemporary interpretations of the intersectionality concept. Next, using an intersectional framework, we review key findings on the distinct stereotypes ascribed to Black, Asian, and White women, and compare and contrast the differential impact of these stereotypes on hiring and leadership for these subgroups of women. Building from these stereotypes, we further review research that explores the different job roles that Black, Asian, and White women occupy, specifically focusing on the impact of occupational segregation, organizational support, and the motherhood penalty. Finally, we examine how the frequency, emotional toll, and legal implications of sexual harassment can vary for women of differing races. Through this review, we bring attention to the pitfalls of studying women as a monolithic category and call for organizational scholars to consider the role of intersectionality in shaping workplace outcomes.     

Love and Money: Reducing Stress and Improving Couple Happiness

A love and money curriculum was developed to guide couples through conversations about the role money plays in their relationships. Thirteen couples participated in the 5-week study. Physiological stress was measured during each of the five meetings. Couples’ satisfaction, attitudes, and behaviors were evaluated with pre-and post-surveys. Findings indicate that couples experienced a reduction in the stress finances put on their relationship and increased happiness with their financial situation, communication, and household responsibilities. Implications for more wide-spread application of the curriculum are provided as a way of talking about money with couples.     

The impact of organisational politics and trust in the top management team on strategic decision implementation success: A middle-manager's perspective

The implementation of strategic decisions is a complex and demanding process that requires an open and lateral communication of free-flowing information to make sense of and champion a firm's intended changes. For the process to be effective, middle managers need to operate within an environment that nurtures a pro-social mindset and helps to cope with stressors caused by the possibility of harm done by the intended changes to their vested interests. Drawing from the job demands-resources model, we argue that organisational politics represent an organisational demand, which may hinder the implementation of strategic decisions. To cope with this demand, implementers recruit organisational resources (i.e. trust in the top management team) that may moderate the negative effects of dysfunctional politics. To test our hypotheses, we drew on a sample of 228 middle managers from 114 private Greek firms with more than 100 employees across various industries. We found that when organisational politics were high during the implementation process, implementation success diminished. However, their negative impact was reduced when trust in the top management team was high. Conversely, when organisational politics were low, middle managers reported a higher implementation success regardless of how highly the top management team was trusted. Our study is the first to test the influence of organisational politics on the success of the implementation process from a middle manager's perspective. In addition, we show that implementation success can be viewed through a demands-resources lens, which provides a meaningful contribution to research on strategy implementation.     

Satisfaction with HR practices and employee performance: A moderated mediation model of engagement and health

This study examines employee evaluations of HR practices (HRPs), which are a critical and yet underexplored antecedent of their effectiveness. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources model, it proposes a moderated mediation model that studies the relationship between employee satisfaction with HRPs and in-role and extra-role performance as mediated by engagement. The results suggest satisfaction with HRPs influences both the performance dimensions considered, although its effects are greater for extra-role performance. Engagement intervenes significantly only in the relationship between this satisfaction and extra-role performance. Furthermore, the study acknowledges the burdens HRP-related resources may place on the workforce and examines the moderating effects of a personal resource such as health on the satisfaction with HRPs-engagement link, finding that it significantly strengthens it. It also finds that the indirect effect of satisfaction with HRPs on extra-role performance is stronger for healthier employees. These findings provide novel insights into the HR causal chain and help practitioners to better manage HRP design, communication, and audits.     

Building better measures of role ambiguity and role conflict: The validation of new role stressor scales

Occupational stress researchers have given considerable attention to role ambiguity and role conflict as predictors of employee health, job attitudes and behaviour. However, the validity of the Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman’s (1970 Rizzo, J. R., House, R. J., &; Lirtzman, S. I. (1970). Role conflict and ambiguity in complex organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 15, 150–163. doi: 10.2307/2391486[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) scales – the most popular role stressor measures – has been a source of disagreement among researchers. In response to the disputed validity of the Rizzo et al. scales, we developed new measures of role ambiguity and role conflict and conducted five studies to examine their psychometric qualities (Study 1 N?=?101 U.S. workers; Study 2 N?=?118 workers primarily employed in the U.S.; Study 3 N?=?135 employed U.S. MBA students; Study 4 N?=?973 members of the U.S. Air Force (USAF); Study 5 N?=?234 workers primarily employed in the U.S.). Across these five studies, we found that the new role stressor scales have desirable psychometric qualities: they displayed high levels of substantive validity, high levels of internal consistency and test–retest reliability, they produced an interpretable factor structure, and we found evidence of their construct validity. We therefore recommend that these new scales be used in future research on role stress.     

The physical activity-mediated Demand–Control (pamDC) model: Linking work characteristics,leisure time physical activity,and well-being

Only recently has research begun to investigate the interplay between work characteristics, leisure time physical activity (LTPA), health, and well-being. So far, however, this research lacks a theoretical foundation. In this article, we introduce the physical activity-mediated Demand–Control (pamDC) model as a new theoretical framework. The two key ideas of the pamDC model are (1) that job demands and job control affect LTPA and (2) that LTPA partially mediates the effects of job demands and job control on health and well-being. We present eight propositions explaining how work characteristics affect LTPA, health, and well-being. For each of these propositions, we discuss empirical evidence and theoretical foundations. We then sketch a research agenda on how to adopt the pamDC model as a new theoretical framework for future research linking work characteristics, LTPA, and health. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of our new model.